


Surrender

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Bazhir, Cave, Cultural Differences, Cultural Imperialism, Death, Desert, Gen, History, Knight & Squire, Legacies, Nature, Pride, Promises, References to Battle, References to Suicide, faith - Freeform, mentoring, surrender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 22:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14174631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: In the desert, Zahir and Jon discuss what the Bazhir have surrendered.





	Surrender

Surrender

“Two hundred Bazhir warriors died in this cave.” Zahir pressed his fingers against the stone wall—red as the blood of fallen heroes—that was cold from the shadow of what would always be called Jari’s Last Stand. Jari, the desert’s bright champion and hope whom the sun had smiled upon until it had set into the sands, had retreated into this cave when Jasson and his army drove them into the ground. With their backs against the wall Zahir was touching, they hadn’t waged battle against the northerners. Instead they had turned their knives upon themselves, and when Jasson’s soldiers had stormed the cave, they had found only men who would die before they knelt. 

The cave where Jari had made his last, brave but doomed, stand against the northerners had loomed large in Zahir’s mind since childhood but his father had refused to take him to a place haunted by the ghosts of so many Bazhir who had perished by their own hands. King Jonathan had no such reservations. In a respite between meetings where he was mediating a territorial dispute between the Sandrunners and the Sleeping Lion, he had agreed to visit the cave where Jari had made his ill-fated last stand with Zahir. Of course, Zahir could have explored the cave alone, but it felt far less fearsome with the steadying presence of his knightmaster to anchor him as he reflected on the horrors of a history that never seemed far enough in the past when he confronted them. 

“They didn’t die by northern weapons, but by their own,” finished Zahir quietly, his hands creeping like spiders up the wall. 

“They preferred to die than to surrender.” King Jonathan rested a palm over Zahir’s. His touch was gentle and doubtlessly intended to be reassuring, but Zahir trembled beneath its symbolism: northerner over Bazhir forever, an inescapable legacy of subjugation and oppression that could crush any people no matter how proud. 

“But they did surrender, sire.” Zahir yanked his hand out from under his knightmaster’s in the only claim to independence that he could make. Among the Bazhir, Jari’s last stand was a byword for a staunch refusal to surrender to the northerners, but in the shadow of the cave where two hundred Bazhir warriors had plunged their daggers into their own beating hearts, he realized this was a lie written in blood that the Bazhir told themselves because it was nobler than the truth. “They surrendered to death, and they surrendered to the northerners. They died because they couldn’t kneel, not because they couldn’t surrender.” 

“You would’ve had them kneel to northerners, Zahir?” The king was stroking his beard, dark as the jaw of the cave that swallowed them, in a sign that Zahir had said something that struck him by surprise. 

“Better to kneel and live to fight another day than to die in defeat.” Zahir bared his teeth in what was less a smile and more a reminder to himself as much as to his knightmaster that he wasn’t a tame Bazhir. Wondering if the Bazhir resistance against first Jasson and then Roald, King Jonathan’s father, would have been less futile if Jari and his followers hadn’t slain themselves in this cave, Zahir went on soft as a last breath, “Their deaths didn’t help the Bazhir but their lives could have. Their deaths were about their own pride, not about the Bazhir, Your Majesty.” 

“Perhaps they couldn’t bear to see their beloved desert conquered by the northerners.” King Jonathan’s sigh echoed in the cave like a dry wind sweeping across the sands with the memory of two hundred fallen Bazhir warriors. 

“Then they were fools who failed to learn the first harsh lesson of the desert, sire.” Zahir snorted as he jerked his chin at the cave walls enclosing them like a mother’s womb and remembered how his own mother had taught him that the desert was a place not meant to be understood even by Bazhir, and that thinking you understood the desert was a path to destruction even if you were a Bazhir. “They shouldn’t have cared about the desert because the desert doesn’t care if people live or die, and imagining it does is a mirage that gets people killed. What matters is people, people Jari and his warriors didn’t protect.” 

“The Bazhir are my people to protect now.” King Jonathan squeezed Zahir’s shoulder, and Zahir felt torn between comfort and the impotent fury he was convinced the Bazhir would forever feel toward northerners for their cruel conquest of the Bazhir’s homeland. “I promise I will fulfill my duty to the Bazhir better than Jari and his warriors did, squire.” 

Zahir wanted to have faith in him since a squire was supposed to trust his knightmaster, but the word “squire” was so foreign to the desert that Zahir only heard how much his culture would have to die in order to survive.


End file.
